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The Building State Capability (BSC) program at Harvard’s Center for International Development uses the Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) approach to build the capability of organizations to execute and implement.

Tag: International development

The period between the end of the American Civil War and the end of World War II saw a transformation of America with the rise of dominant large organizations in both the private economy and public life. The economic historian Alfred Chandler’s in The Visible Hand and Scale and Scope documents the rise of “managerial capitalism” with large economic bureaucracies in the railroads, oil, steel, automobiles, electricity, and telecommunications establishing new foundations of a productive economy.

Similarly, in nearly every domain of engagement the organization of the state became more centralized, more bureaucratic, more centrally controlled. Or, as this is typically described, the “Progressive Agenda” caused governance to become more “professional” more “scientific” more “efficient” as bureaucratic hierarchies displaced localism and Ostrom-esque “polycentric” systems. Historians of the US tell this story about many fields and organizations.

Samuel Hays Conservation And The Gospel Of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920 is summarized as: “Against a background of rivers, forests, ranges, and public lands, this book defines two conflicting political processes: the demand for an integrated, controlled development guided by an elite group of scientists and technicians and the demand for a looser system allowing grassroots impulses to have a voice through elected government representatives.” In the end the “modern” organizations of management of publicly owned lands—but only after having to struggle to prove the improved effectiveness of their methods against continued powerful opposition.

Education historian David Tyack’s The One Best System: History of American Urban Education tells of the rise of the urban school system as a “modern” and “scientific” organization that struggled—with mixed success—to consolidate and control the myriad of locally controlled schools and school districts. American began the century with 150,000 school districts, down to around 15,000 today.

Hernando de Soto, though not an academic historian like the others, tells “The Missing Lessons of US History” in chapter 5 of his Mystery of Capital.He shows that property rights in the US as the country expanded westward were a constant struggle between local systems of de facto recognition of use and attempts at de jure top-down ordered and rational systems. In this struggle the de facto usually won politically and the law changed to acknowledge the reality, rather than vice versa.

In each of these cases narratives of “scientific” and “efficiency” and “rational” and “ordered” and “modern” were used to justify placing ever greater power into the hands of centralized organizations. But these organizations had to struggle against counter-claims of people and grass-roots movements and local politics who knew they were losing power. Westerners strongly resisted the claims of the “conservation” movement that they should be given consolidate power over land use. Parents resisted being sidelined in their control of the schools. People with de facto usufruct rights over land resisted the formal legal claims against their control. Local postmasters resisted the increasingly central control of the post office.

In this struggle they used their rights as citizens for a variety of modes expression of opposition and their voice in democratic processes. The result was a messy, protracted, conflicted struggle.

I take one of the main points of Bill Easterly’s new book The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor to be that the mainstream “development” process underestimated the necessity of the struggle. That is, it was thought that “modernization” could be achieved as a purely technical exercise in which the demonstrable successful organizations and institutions of the “developed” world could be transplanted to other countries. Why should the newly sovereign country in the 1950s and 1960s “struggle” towards an effective Post Office when there exist working models throughout the world (US Post Office, Royal Mail, Bundespost)? It was believed that “modern” police forces, schools, roads, courts, forest services, water companies—the organizations that make a state capable and deliver what the state promises—could be created without all of the bother of citizens being empowered to not just vote, but also resist, to subvert, to complain, to protest, to organize and agitate.

There are a variety of conjectures as to how and why this possibility of “transplantation” through development could actually, in some instances, make things worse.

One, organizations could gain legitimacy simply from mimicking the forms of rich country organizations without their function. Sociologists of organizations call this “isomorphism” and describe the pernicious impacts of allowing organizations to attract support without having to demonstrate superior functionality.

Two, the availability of resources from development agencies who were more familiar with and expected to see “modern” organizations meant that accountability to citizens could be attenuated.

Three, by changing the nature of the struggle the “experts” were not forced into a process of testing their ideas and notions and ways of “seeing like a state” against direct and immediate feedback—and push back—from local realities. Mistakes of mismatch between what the “experts” recommended and the reality of what could work in the local context could be larger and persist longer when insulated from the test of functionality.

But you cannot juggle without the struggle. The fact that someone else can juggle, and can show you how to juggle, and describe juggling in great detail does not mean that functionality is transferable. By changing the nature of the struggle many developing countries are stuck with state organizations that just cannot juggle.

10 years ago, the World Development Report (WDR) 2004 entitled Making Services Work for Poor People, marked a watershed moment in the development agenda. It recognized that politics and accountability are crucial to improving services. Furthermore, it shifted the focus from measuring inputs to outputs.

In the opening plenary, Shanta Devarajan stated that the WDR 2004 changed the nature of the conversation by recognizing that: (i) services fail poor people, (ii) money is not the solution, and (iii) “the solution” is not the solution.

What have we learned?

Context Matters: We got better at describing service delivery problems but not at improving services. Ruth Levine in her interview acknowledged that we have learned how to measure how significant the problem is and to unpack the dimensions of service delivery quality. But we have not learned anything generalizable because context matters.

Politics Matters: Marta Foresti noted that ‘politics is not just a problem it’s also part of the solution.’ Working around politics rather than with it, does not work.

Connections Matter: In her reflections, Leni Wild wrote – we are dealing with systems and networks through which a much wider set of stakeholders are connected. So the nature of the connections matters, in terms of power balances, incentives and norms. This is similar to what Matt Andrews calls multi-agent leadership.

Experimentation: Ruth Levine stressed the need to focus on organizations, individuals embedded in local circumstances/context and enabling local providers to experiment and learn what works in their context. She added, “it is a long complicated road.”

Humility, Curiosity and Openness:Rakesh Rajani stated that we have to be able to know we don’t have all the answers. It is unlikely to work the first time and so we need to have the courage to tweak, listen to others and to learn from failure. Asking questions, trying, iterating, struggling and learning, rather than having solutions, is key.

As I reflect on how change happens in development, 5 themes come to mind. I wrote about the importance of moments which are vital to foster change in complex contexts, and muddling which is important to find and fit reform and change content that fosters real development. Today I will discuss the third one: mundane.

The mundane matters in development. What I mean is simply that everyday, boring, taken for granted events, pressures, relationships, activities and such have a huge influence on prospects for change and development. We think these things are ordinary, banal, and don’t matter. But actually they dominate time and activity, and are the key to ‘getting things done’ and to prospects for change and development.

If mundane processes and pressures do not foster efficient activity, organizations are likely to be inefficient–there will be loads of meetings and people answering emails and writing papers and filling in time sheets and doing due diligence activities but these mundane activities will not foster effective results. Similarly, if the mundane does not support change then change and development will not happen: people will attend meetings but won’t follow-up with new activities because their time is already spoken for by the mundane.

I have seen this more than ever before in some of my reform experiments in 2013. The trouble they ran into had little to do with a lack of ideas or money. Instead, the challenges were mundane: getting people to ‘do’ new things in already full calendars, and to sit in meetings and engage purposively without looking down at the three cell phones on the table in front of them, and more. In all the experiences I have been part of, change only started when these and other mundane influences were managed or even altered.

The problem is two-fold:

First, development is full of mundanity. Governments and development organizations are the ones Andy Partridge (lead singer of the 80s band XTC) was talking about when he wrote: “We’re horrible mundane, aggressively mundane, individuals. We’re the ninjas of the mundane…”

Second, the mundane is mundane. What I mean is that most development specialists think it does not matter. “Too boring. Too unimportant. So easy to overcome. Surely not as important as rigorous empirical analysis and fancy new ideas.” But they often find that the mundane crowds out the new activities and empirics–again and again–to limit and undermine development initiatives.

It would be great to see development experts taking the mundane seriously. I think a strategy to identify, manage and even alter the mundane could be more important than most fancy development strategies. And infinitely more valuable than a fancy ‘Science of Delivery’. We need to rethink the mundane, seeing it as the key to getting things done and the key to change; less ordinary and banal and boring and more central to development.

As I reflect on how change happens in development, 5 themes come to mind. I wrote about moments yesterday. Today I will discuss the second one: muddling matters. What I mean is that developing countries need to muddle through if they want to improve governance; there are no quick answers to the complex challenge of governance reform.

However, I don’t mean that countries should be muddled. Muddling through–or purposive muddling as I like to call it–is an active, intentional and focused process that helps countries find and fit solutions that work in their context. I also don’t mean to say that muddling ‘should’ be part of a successful reform process. My research shows that muddling ‘is’ part of successful reform. There is ample evidence that successful change comes about through experimentation with multiple reform options, with an emphasis on solving problems, and a whole lot of iteration and learning. I’ve written a few papers in this regard and will continue to write more.

Many people in the development community tell me that they agree with the idea of muddling (conceptually), but don’t see how it can be done in developing countries or in governments where politicians are looking for solutions and want the solutions ‘yesterday.’ I keep telling these people, that purposive muddling is common, and necessary, and instead of saying ‘it isn’t possible’ we should be exploring the strategies others have adopted to make it possible (and to make it part of the DNA of some organizations).

Anyone who has ever worked in India knows how hard it is to implement programs. The sheer size of the country makes it impossible for anyone but the government, who is the only one with infrastructure and reach, to provide public services to its citizens. Currently, every district administers typically 100+ development schemes. Each scheme has its own rules, regulations, reporting, and funding. Districts are continuously burdened with new schemes and more work without the requisite resources. They are often understaffed and have few (if any) skilled functionaries to be able to do their job. The reality is that 90% of the time is spent on routine day-to-day management leaving no time for strategic planning or experimentation.

To address the capacity and implementation gaps in backward districts which are isolated and less developed, the Ministry of Rural Development launched the Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellowship (PMRDF) in 2012. The aim of the fellowship was to provide catalytic support to the district administration to help improve the delivery of programs and to develop a cadre of committed development professionals. The eligibility criteria was a minimum of a four-year degree from a recognized university. The fellows were to work for 2-3 years under the supervision of the District Collector, and paid INR 75,000 ($1,210) per month with a 10% increment each year subject to performance. That is a very generous amount. The rationale was to attract younger people who were passionate about development and willing to go to remote areas, but could not afford the low wages. In essence this was a way to bring in new blood into the system.

816 applicants were shortlisted from a total of 8,560 applicants for a group discussion and a personal interview. 156 fellows were selected to work across 82 districts in 9 states. Each state decided on the placement of fellows with 1-3 per district. Currently there are 137 fellows from the first batch and a second batch has just been selected. For more details see the TEDx talk.

Some of the challenges faced during the implementation of the 2012-13 PMRDFs include:

Building the trust of the States/District Collectors: When the program was initially announced, it was viewed suspiciously by some (i.e. was the center sending monitors to the states/districts?). Many meetings were held to explain and clarify the objectives of the program and to bring the states on board.

Ineffective use of the fellows: Depending on the District Collector, some fellows were welcomed and given a lot of responsibility and authority to experiment, while some others were used as glorified executive assistants – which is also understandable given the lack of human resources at the district level.

Lack of authority to issue instructions or to sanction funds: The fellows are not part of the government bureaucracy and therefore have no signing authority and cannot issue orders to lower level functionaries. As a result, they need to go to the District Collector with all those requests leading to time delays and inefficiencies. To address this, the state of Andhra Pradesh has delegated a budget head specifically for the fellows.

High monthly salary is attracting applicants who are not necessarily passionate about development: This has been an unintended consequence and they have tried to be more mindful in the interviews for the 2nd batch of fellows.

What happens after the fellows leave? One criticism is that they are building temporary capacity. To address this, the second batch will be offered one year of public service after their fellowship. However, this issue remains a challenge.

Here are some testimonies of the fellows, for more read their profile book or visit their blog.

“I still remember an incident from my initial days, when a village welcomed and garlanded me saying: We are receiving our first government official in our village after Independence.“

“… working with the field staff in implementation of these schemes was not always easy. My efforts at convincing them and the higher authorities did not yield fruit every time. The convergence of different schemes has also been a challenge as each scheme has different criteria for beneficiary selection and process of implementation. However, struggling with these issues every day helped me understand the minutest details of these schemes and the complexities involved in the development sector.”

“This last one year as a PMRDF has helped me develop both personally and professionally. It has given me a chance to work and interact with people at every level of the hierarchy, starting with the panchayat secretary and going up to state officials.”

“The last one year has been a period of immense pleasure, satisfaction, frustration, learning and un-learning … There were difficulties: sluggishness, winning the trust of various actors and bringing them onto common platform to get the ball rolling, getting bogged down with too many operational formalities needing to continuously establish yourself within the system. I learnt that things will happen if there is strong will. I learnt of a number of unsung heroes who keep things going—unappreciated and unrecognized—but making a difference each day with their integrity.” This comment is a great illustration of Matt Andrew’s multi-agent leadership paper, Who really Leads Development?

The PMRDF is a work in progress with a lot of learning, iterating and adaptation. There are no easy solutions when you are working on implementation intensive programs. It will be interesting to see what other lessons are learned from this dynamic experiment of trying to solve capacity issues at the last mile of service delivery.

Innovations and adaptations that occur in one place often need to be scaled in order to lead to system-level change. However, in development, the road from small to big is challenging and rife with pitfalls. In this last of the first BSC video series, Michael Woolcock, discusses our approach to building state capability, which is built around having communities of practice around the world. These are initially small teams within organizations that have the authority, latitude, opportunity and resources to tackle problems they encounter by learning, iterating and adapting. You can watch the video below or on YouTube.

Maintaining your support through a change process is often a challenging task which requires time and effort. In this video, Matt Andrews, explains how one does not only have to maintain the initial authorization, but also expand the number of actors who provide authorization, thus increasing the legitimacy of the project or reform. You can watch the video below or on YouTube.